Dialectic

Dialectic (Gk. dialektike, conversation), properly disputation, used by the Sophists (q.v.) to exhibit their own skill; by Socrates (1) to expose his hearers' prejudices and so convince them of their ignorance; (2) to arrive at the nature of general conceptions such as virtue, justice, etc. (Xenophon says that Socrates, connecting the meanings of dialegomai, to converse, and dialegein, its active voice, to distribute, said that dialectic was so called because it "classed things according to their kinds.") Plato's dialectic is the science dealing with the real essences which enter into and constitute the true nature of the particulars in a class and are expressed in its definition. In one passage (Rep. vi., sub fin.) it is said to take up the fundamental ideas of the sciences (number, mass, motion, etc.) and explain their relation to one another and the supreme law of the universe or Idea of Good. (We need hardly add that this conception is not worked out.) Hegel's dialectic is that supreme process of thought which deals with and solves the difficulties and contradictions involved in fundamental ideas.